This Monday we will be our final vote on the proposed FY24 budget, as we amended it this past Monday. I’ll provide a summary on this below. The budget includes a number of things for Ward 7, which I mentioned previously, and I managed to get a few more added for this year. There is no proposed increase to our tax rate, though you may see your taxes increase naturally if our property values go up.

Update on Budget

Update on the budget amendments I proposed (final vote on budget upcoming):

1. $7,000 in one-time-use money for an Urban Tree Canopy assessment. - PASSED
2. $100,000 of one-time-use money to expand a climate change/resilience/sea level rise vulnerability study to include Wards 2, 3, & 6 (7 & 8 will already be included and most of the study should be funded by the new Resilience Authority). - PASSED
3. Potential adjustments of the Recreation & Parks fees, delaying the implementation of some newly proposed fees until we have time to discuss our approach with them. In particular, we are finding that some of our recreational fees for using facilities, such as the pool or athletic fees, can be rather burdensome for the non-profits and may be counterproductive in that they may drive registration fees up (an accessibility issue). - PASSED
4. ~$75,000 in COVID relief money to add a legislative aide for the Council. We need help. Especially those of us with full time jobs. - FAILED
5. $50,000 of one-time-use money to put together a feasibility/conceptual study regarding a hiker/biker trail between Bay Ridge Ave and Tyler Ave, to see if it’s even feasible to do such a project and to determine what the benefits/risks may be to doing such a thing. - PASSED

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Rob --

Please see below for the normal briefing on our Monday Council meeting. Not too much going on.

Update on Budget

I do want to provide you with a few updates on the budget. Here are a few things relevant to Ward 7 that are in the budget as proposed:

1. Edgewood sidewalk improvements: A Capital Improvement Project is in the budget to continue putting together a plan to add an improved sidewalk and lighting along Edgewood Rd in front of/along the Ellen Moyer Back Creek Park/Maritime Museum campus. I added this to the budget last year via amendment but it has not been completed yet.
2. Bay Ridge sidewalk improvements: A Capital Improvement Project is in the budget to continue putting together a plan to add a sidewalk along Bay Ridge Ave in front of the Shell gas station and nearby church. I added this to the budget last year via amendment but it has not been completed yet.
3. There is funding for improving/adding a crosswalk on Edgewood Rd across from Yachtsman Way. I believe I was told this should be completed by the end of summer.

Amendments to the budget that I am planning on moving forward with:

1. $7,000 in one-time-use money for an Urban Tree Canopy assessment.
2. $100,000 of one-time-use money to expand a climate change/resilience/sea level rise vulnerability assessment with recommendations to include Wards 2 & 4 (7 & 8 will already be included and most of the study should be funded by the new Resilience Authority).
3. Potential adjustments of the Recreation & Parks fees, delaying the implementation of some newly proposed fees until we have time to discuss our approach with them. In particular, we are finding that some of our recreational fees for using facilities, such as the pool or athletic fields, can be rather burdensome for the non-profits and may be counterproductive in that they may drive registration fees up (an accessibility issue). Furthermore, if we have to keep entertaining requests to waive the fees, that is telling me the fees may be too high and need to be changed. 
4. ~$75,000 in COVID relief money to add a legislative aide for the Council. We need help. Especially those of us with full time jobs.
5. $50,000 of one-time-use money to put together a feasibility/conceptual study regarding a hiker/biker trail between Bay Ridge Ave and Tyler Ave, to see if it’s even feasible to do such a project and to determine what the benefits/risks may be to doing such a thing.

If you have thoughts on these please let me know. We will be discussing all of our proposed budget amendments next week, but they won’t be voted on for a another few weeks.

Recap of previous meeting

There was no legislation up for a final vote so not much to summarize from our last meeting.                 

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

There isn’t too much happening at the next Council meeting. The meeting will be focused on public hearings regarding the proposed budget, and then a number of first reader (introductions) votes.

Recap of previous meeting

As a recap of our previous meeting, my Resolution supporting the Penguins swim team passed, with a bit of a struggle. Though I’m happy to report that an agreement has been reached between the Penguins and Recreation & Parks. It’s actually one of the compromises I brought up earlier in the process, but apparently it took a Resolution for it to be considered.

As the newspaper reported, there was a disagreement between the Mayor and I, over rules of procedure. He had called on me (giving me the floor), and I asked the Penguins leadership be brought forward to answer questions, as we just did so with Recreation & Parks. Unfortunately, the Mayor refused to do so. I proceeded to make a motion to “Appeal from decision of Chair” (any decision of the chair can be overruled with a majority vote of Council), as allowed in City Code 2.16.110, which was seconded by Alderman Gay, which means that my motion was valid and needed to be voted on. The Mayor refused to allow a vote on my motion, as required in Robert’s Rules and our City Code. He eventually allowed a Call the Question vote which he used to skirt past my motion, despite me persisting for about 15 minutes or so. Procedurally this is not allowed. Neither our City Clerk nor our City Attorney spoke up during the matter. Our City Attorney, whom is appointed by the Mayor, has now told me they can provide no clarifications on how such a procedure should function or be handled by the Council/Mayor/Chair in the future. I’m exploring other options but this really has exposed a flaw/weakness in our form of local governance, if the Mayor can unilaterally ignore something in our City Code. More on this as I evaluate ways forward.                     

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Rob --

Sorry about getting this out late, busy Earth Day weekend and, more importantly, my wife’s birthday weekend!

Penguin Swim team update

As I mentioned in my last email, Recreation & Parks is only offering the Penguins swim team 4 lanes this year for their practices. The issues with this is that it leads to very crowded swim lanes, which is a safety issue as well as makes circle swimming very difficult. Recreation & Parks started negotiating with the team, regarding a contract for this summer, back in October, and they had a draft contract in February (for 5 lanes) that the City had agreed to. However, they put it on hold and then abruptly backed out of that draft contract in March, upending the team plans. Changing things at this last minute makes it difficult for everyone, the team and Rec & Parks, and I maintain that it would be much better for all to simply honor the contract for this summer and work out a solution for next year in the fall. The Resolution is an attempt to bring some solution to the table, as the City Manager’s office was unable to do so on their own.

If you have had kids who have gone through this program, or if you yourself have gone through it, please consider showing up to testify on Monday (7pm at 160 Duke of Gloucester St) or submit your testimony at www.Annapolis.gov/testimony                

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

I have a number of important updates for you regarding this Monday’s Council meeting.

Penguin Swim team survival at stake

Many of us have had our kids go through the Truxtun Park Pool Penguin swim team. It’s our only public, accessible swim team in our area. As a lifelong swimmer, who has competed nationally in high school and college, this is an important issue for me personally, as well as because as your Alderman, I know many of you appreciate this program.

Unfortunately, after around 20 years of peaceful cooperation with the City (except last year), our Rec & Parks Department has decided to attempt to restrict the number of lanes that the team can use, reducing them from the historic 5 lanes down to 3 or 4. To put it simply, we can’t have a competitive team at our pool with only 3 or 4 lanes, as it leads to crowded, unsafe lane sizes, and an inability to have enough kids for a viable and competitive team.  

Furthermore, reducing the lanes to a point where it drives the team away, does not comply with the intention of the new pool, as stated in our Capital Improvement Plan that specifically states that the pool shall include a 6-lane competitive pool. Additionally, Rec & Parks’ own performance standards, again approved by the Council, state that they should be striving to improve competitive team sporting within our City.

Our Penguin team has long recruited and promoted the team amongst our lower income neighborhoods and title 1 schools. This is a key program to ensuring our kids see swimming as a vital skill and sport, and that the sport itself increases its diversity. Eliminating or forcing out the team is not the answer.

If you have had kids who have gone through this program, or if you yourself have gone through it, please consider showing up to testify on Monday (7pm at 160 Duke of Gloucester St) or submit your testimony at www.Annapolis.gov/testimony

Workforce Housing O-40-23

We defeated a motion to postpone O-40-23 at our last meeting, but apparently we made a mistake and also needed to vote on specifically approving or denying this legislation, as opposed to just the motion to postpone. Hence, it has popped up again on our agenda. Same as last time, I will be voting against this for the reasons I’ve expressed before.

State of City address & FY24 Budget

This is also the meeting when the Mayor introduces his FY24 budget to the Council, and when he gives his “State of the City” address. I hope you can tune in to watch.                               

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

We don’t have anything up for a public hearing on Monday, but we do have a number of things of note that we will be taking action on. Of particular note are the competing pieces of housing legislation, O-40-22 (workforce housing – would create mass changes to our zoning districts allowing building of unlimited height with 2-5+ units nearly all of our zoning districts, adding to our density, with individual projects under 11 units not triggering our adequate facilities laws) and R-1-23 (this strives for us to take a strategic approach to addressing housing affordability via our Comprehensive Plan, building consensus along the way).

There is also an odd piece of legislation being introduced that would allow a “party boat” (their name, not mine) to operate in downtown waters with amplified music. This is only being introduced but it did strike me as a bit unusual.

Lastly, I posted some information below on a public hearing regarding a Forest Drive safety study being undertaken by the County.  

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Adequate Public Facilities – Police standards

The big issue for Monday is that the Council will hear two pieces of legislation dealing with the Adequate Public Facilities (APF) standards for policing. Currently, we require that if a new development over 11 units wants to be permitted, they must prove we have adequate public facilities for a number of aspects of infrastructure. One of which is police. Our code requires that we fund 3.2 officers per every 1,000 City resident. Currently we are below that, simply because we cannot hire enough officers (we fund enough but can't fill the positions). The result is that development cannot receive their certificate of APF for police. There are two proposals being introduced as to how to address this.

The first approach, being introduced by the Mayor, is O-7-23. This would allow the City to count the fire fighters on staff that are also trained police officers, and put us in technical compliance with our police APF, allowing development projects to proceed. I don’t agree with this approach because we gain nothing to address public safety issues except new development. I would also need to know exactly how the fire fighters would support public safety and also receive assurances this will not impact our emergency services with AFD.

The second approach, being introduced by me, is O-9-23. This would create a mitigation section, which would say, if we aren’t currently in compliance with the police APF, then a development must provide funding for mitigation. It lists allowable mitigation, which is grouped as security measures (i.e. cameras or contractual security officers) or social services measures (i.e. funding for social workers), or a combination of the two, as allowed by the Chief of Police and City Manager. The benefit to this approach is it would allow us to receive resources that would address the public safety issues brought along with new development. We would gain something, as opposed to O-7-23 where we gain little.

Public hearing

Also note that there will be a public hearing on O-49-23, which is an alternative to the earlier proposal (since withdrawn by the sponsor) to completely eliminate parking requirements for restaurants. The alternative would allow the parking requirements to be waived via fee-in-lieu, with that fee hopefully going towards a fund that supports improving mobility for residents (if amended successfully).

Ward re-districting

Also, as I mentioned last time, we have Ward redistricting being discussed since Ward 7 has too few people. Here are two maps summarizing the recommended changes from our task force, both of which would slightly alter Ward 7 by adding Bay Ridge Gardens into our ward. Here is map Alt C and map Ald 3C.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Workforce housing update

I first wanted to provide an update on O-40-22 (workforce housing), the ordinance that would allow density akin to apartment-hotels in single family residential districts throughout the City. I’ve documented my concerns here previously, and you can find my comments in the paper here. There was considerable public testimony on O-40-22, but what’s clear is that consensus has not been established on this legislation and at least as of now, there are not enough votes for it to pass (though there is only a 1-vote margin). However, the co-sponsors have not pulled the legislation and are instead trying to amend it. As I alluded to in the paper, I do not think this is legislation that can be saved. The fundamental flaw is that it should be a part of our comprehensive planning process, which is our method of building consensus in the community around our housing needs. In order to go through that process, this legislation needs to be withdrawn and be made a part of that discussion. Similarly, my other major concern about adequate public facilities cannot simply be amended into this legislation. Despite what many supporters said during their testimony, the housing density increase proposed in O-40-22 would NOT have to go through our adequate public facilities laws, unless they are building 11 or more units on one site. I am surprised and disappointed that certain staff, as well as those who served on our affordable housing task force, are perpetuating this misinformation. We have confirmed it in Environmental Matters Committee, with our Planning & Zoning staff, that the proposed housing would NOT have to comply with our adequate public facilities. This is another fundamental flaw that risks concentrating development and density impacts in certain neighborhoods and parts of our City, and I do not think this can be fixed via amendment.  

I believe we need to take a consensus based approach to first identify and discuss what our housing goals are as a Council and community. I propose we do so via a work session. Once we identify any goals/targets, we should then utilize the Comprehensive Planning process to recommend policies that would help us achieve those goals. I hope we can also utilize the approach laid out in the 2009 Comprehensive Plan that states we need to take a strategic and targeted approach when adjusting density, while at the same time honoring and respecting neighborhood character. This is precisely what we are attempting to do with R-1-23. This is a Resolution that myself and 4 other co-sponsors are introducing to make it clear these are the steps we want to take and our goal is to establish consensus, not division in our community.  

Quiet Waters park expansion thoughts

I’ve received a number of questions about my stance on the proposed use of the Quiet Waters Park expansion, as detailed in the paper by the County executive and our County Councilperson. You can find details of the proposed plans here, as well as hear directly from the Chesapeake Conservancy here.

I support the proposed plans by the County Executive and County Council. Personally, I think this is getting blown way out of proportion. This expansion of our park was pursued by the County and the Chesapeake Conservancy, and the original owners had always stipulated that they wanted their property utilized by the Chesapeake Conservancy. The original idea was for them to utilize the existing home to house their non-profit business. When the original home was damaged by the tornado that made its way through the park, it was determined that Chesapeake Conservancy will need to construct a new building, which will, by the way, be a LEED (green) building. Most of the new construction will be concentrated to the previously developed areas.  I’ve also heard from folks that this is an “unprecedented” use of public property. Let’s be clear, there are plenty of precedents for utilizing what will be public property in this manner. In the City, we have given a long-term lease to the Annapolis Maritime Museum to manage the Ellen Moyer Back Creek park. What they have done is retrofit and renovate the existing unused building to house their offices. They are putting an unused public asset to use for a good cause and improving the property at the same time. They are managing this property a lot better than the City ever did. Another example is CRAB, where the City owns that property but is leasing it to CRAB to place their headquarters. A third example would be the Annapolis Children’s museum, where the City actually owns that property. In this case, having the Quiet Waters park expansion be utilized in this fashion, by a non-profit as the original owners envisioned, is desirable to the alternative, which would be a housing development. I have checked the critical area maps and this is an LDA (limited development area) in the Critical area, which means it could have been sold for housing, but instead will be utilized by the public and at the same time house a very reputable and respectable non-profit that helped to seal the land deal. Seems like a win-win to me. To top it off, the County has committed to a no net loss policy of any trees/forests that need to be removed. So at this point, I’d argue we should be looking for ways to support and improve the plans, rather than fighting against the proposal so much.

Here is the area in question (the southeast corner of the park, which was private property).

And the proposed disturbance and tree removals:

Stay healthy and stay safe,

 Rob

This Monday will be the final public hearing on O-40-22, which is titled “workforce  housing”, but in reality is a giveaway to developers that would allow them to build multi-family housing, as dense as “apartment hotels” without any height limit, in the middle of single family housing neighborhoods by right, all the while bypassing our normal democratic process for changing zoning and bypassing our normal adequate public facilities requirements (i.e. requirements that we have adequate schools, roads, police, fire, environmental protection, recreational space, etc). If you need a refresher on this issue, I would point you to my Capital Gazette op-ed on the legislation. But as you can probably tell, while I support workforce housing, this legislation is not good policy. Monday will be your last opportunity to testify on this Ordinance prior to it heading off to our Committees for review. After Committee review, it will head back to the Council for a final vote, probably in February or March. The public hearing will be this Monday night at 7pm, and you will have 3 minutes to speak. You can also submit written testimony at www.annapolis.gov/testimony. 

Also at this Monday’s meeting, there will be a public hearing on an Ordinance I have introduced, O-55-22, which is in response to all of the issues we had with the Parkeside Preserve project discharging sediment pollution into Quiet Waters Park. The legislation would establish strong inspection procedures that require inspecting the receiving waters, more frequent inspections on larger sites, documented follow-up to stop repeat offenses, and more.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

 Rob

Thank you to those who were able to attend this past Monday’s Town Hall meeting. If you missed the meeting, we spent most of it talking about O-40-22, titled Workforce Housing, which would open up all of our zoning districts (except Maritime and industrial) to density akin to apartments, all while bypassing our normal zoning amendment process. The density I’m referring to could be anywhere between 4-6+ units with no restriction on height, placed on any single family lot. I do NOT support this legislation as it is currently written. While we certainly need more below market rate housing (which is what this “workforce” housing would be), whenever we add density, especially at such a drastic level, it needs to be done with a robust public process and we must ensure that it will not impact our neighborhoods with increased traffic, parking woes, school overcrowding, noise, policing impacts, etc. Such a thing should really be done through our zoning amendment process as well as our Comprehensive Planning process, and have to comply with our adequate public facilities code, none of which would be done as currently written.

For me to have any hopes of defeating or amending this, I will need your help. If you can provide in-person testimony on this legislation, the public hearing will be this Monday night at 7pm at City Hall (160 Duke of Gloucester St), and you will have 3 minutes to speak. You can also submit written testimony at www.annapolis.gov/testimony. 

Also at this Monday’s meeting, I’ll be introducing O-55-22, which is in response to all of the issues we had with the Parkeside Preserve project discharging sediment pollution into Quiet Waters Park. The legislation would establish strong inspection procedures that require inspecting the receiving waters, more frequent inspections on larger sites, documented follow-up to stop repeat offenses, and more. The public hearing for this legislation will probably be in January.